In this paper, I argued that the future-oriented readings in Gitksan complements provide evidence for structural differences between these complements: propo-sitional complements are CPs, future-irrealis complements are ModP and tense-less complements are either vPs or ModP. The absence of TP in future-irrealis and tenseless complements (and of ModP in complements ofsi’ix), systematically limits the availability of temporal readings in them, while its presence in proposi-tional complements expectedly enables most temporal interpretations. The con-veniently marked futurity in these complements makes the differences between them easier to spot. The findings from Gitksan provide preliminary support for the implicational complementation hierarchy. One potential avenue for further research would be the left periphery. The proposed structural analysis makes the following prediction about the distribution of a complementizerwil: it should be able to occur in propositional complements, but not in future-irrealis and tense-less complements. This prediction is borne out, as shown in (49).
6I would like to thank the reviewer for drawing my attention to this.
5 Future interpretation in Gitksan and reduced clausal complements
‘Diana said two weeks ago that she would go to Winnipeg.’
b. Sim
‘I wanted to watch Tenet yesterday (but it is not being shown anymore).’
‘He’s trying to run.’
d. Bag-a-t
‘He’s trying to run.’
What is puzzling is the order of dim and wil: dim standardly precedes wil in both Gitksan (Rigsby 1986) and neighboring Nisga’a (Tarpent 1987). Syntac-tically, this is problematic, since wil is supposedly a complementizer anddim is a prospective aspect. While I do not have a straight-forward solution at this point, note thatdim also proceeds conjunctionii‘and then’ in Nisg’a (Tarpent 1987: 434), but can be preceded by complementizer ji‘whether’ (Tarpent 1987:
430). It is also in an unexpected place when combined with a progressive marker yukw, as in (50). (50) is about a future event, sodimshould be taking a scope over yukw, which is not reflected on the surface. One option is that there is some kind of phonological requirement that determines the surface order of dim. Finally, dim is obligatory in purpose clauses. But it can occur withwil in either order, resulting in two different interpretations, as in (51). I leave this puzzle for further research.
‘It is going to rain.’
(51) [Why did Rosemary come to UBC today?]
a. Witxw
‘She arrived to work.’
b. ’Witxw
‘She came because she works there.’
Acknowledgments
Ha’miiyaa to my dear consultants Vince Gogag, Barbara Sennott, Hector Hill, Ray Jones and Barry Sampere for teaching me their language. This work would be impossible without your help! I would also like to thank the GitLab and the TAP Lab at UBC for their ongoing support and feedback. Special thanks go to Yurika Aonuki, Henry Davis, Clarissa Forbes, Marianne Huijsmans, John Lyon, Lisa Matthewson, Hotze Rullmann, Michael Schwan and Anne-Michelle Tessier for their useful feedback, as well as to Zheng Shen and Sabine Laszakovits for their patience and constant help. This work was made possible by the Jacobs Research Fund awarded to the GitLab, and by the Social Sciences and Humani-ties Research Council of Canada grant (#435-2016-0381) awarded to the TAP Lab.
Last but not least, I would like to thank Susi for unselfishly sharing with me her knowledge and support over the years, and for inspiring me to continue working on this topic. Vielen Dank, Susi!
Abbreviations
1/2/3 first/second/third person
i/ii/iii series i/ii/iii pronoun
ax agent extraction
pn proper noun determiner prep preposition
5 Future interpretation in Gitksan and reduced clausal complements
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